Ilana Halperin (born in 1973, New York) lives and works in Glasgow. She received a Master of Fine Arts from the Glasgow School of Art and her Bachelor of Arts from Brown University.

Through the course of her career as an artist, she has boiled milk in a 100 degree Celsius sulphur spring in the crater of an active volcano; made a bathtub into a geyser; celebrated her 30th birthday with a volcano born the same year; talked about rocks over coffee with geologists on the crest of an erupting volcano; formed sculptures in caves and hotsprings; spent time with geology collections formed inside the body and held the Allende meteorite, the oldest known object in the solar system, in her hands.

Halperin’s creative output focuses upon geological activity and phenomena in an engagement with our understanding of time. Her approach combines fieldwork in diverse locations: Hawaii, Iceland, France, China and in museums, archives and laboratories with an active studio-based practice. In the development of new ideas, she has had the honour and pleasure of working with organisations such as The Global Volcanism Program, the British Geological Survey and Earthwatch.

Halperin’s recent solo exhibition The Library was at National Museum of Scotland. Previous solo exhibitions include Steine at the Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité and Hand Held Lava at Schering Stiftung, Berlin; Physical Geology (slow time) at Artists Space, New York and The Difficulty of Falling in Love During an Earthquake at Tramway, Glasgow.

Her work has featured in numerous group exhibitions including Cristallisations – la naissance d’un ordre caché, at La Grande Place, Musée du Cristal Saint-Louis, curated by Centre Pompidou Metz (2014); Allegory of the Cave Painting, curated by Mihnea Mircan, Extra City, Antwerp (2014); Estratos curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, PAC Murcia (2008); Sharjah Biennial 8 (2007) and Experimental Geography curated by Nato Thompson (touring 2008-11). She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Inaugural Artist Fellowship at National Museums Scotland, a British Council Darwin Now Award and an Alchemy Fellowship at Manchester Museum. She has undertaken artist residencies at the Camden Arts Centre; Cove Park and aboard the Professor Molchanov, an ecotourism vessel that travels into the far North. She was Artist-Curator of Geology at Shrewsbury Museum, the birthplace of Charles Darwin, from 2011–14. She is currently Artist-in-Residence at The Exploratorium, San Francisco.

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I work with the gallery Patricia Fleming Projects based in Glasgow, who will be delighted to discuss both past and current projects